


Night of the Meteor

by biichama (biichan), inverts



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Steampunk, Homestuck Shipping Olympics, Illustrated, Land Sakes Almighty We Are Cooking With Petrol Now!, Multi, Post-Scratch
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-27
Updated: 2011-09-27
Packaged: 2017-10-24 02:45:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,861
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/258051
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/biichan/pseuds/biichama, https://archiveofourown.org/users/inverts/pseuds/inverts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On the morning of April 13th, 1895, Miss Jade Harley wakes up from a very important dream.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Night of the Meteor

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was written for Round Three of the Homestuck Shipping Olympics. Inverts wanted to draw Steampunk, Biichan volunteered to write the story to go along with Inverts' drawings and so here we are!

  


****

## A Sleeper Awakens • Mysterious Coordinates • Four Orphan Children • Mr Egbert's Airship • Hellmurder Island • Mr Strider's Warning • Inside The Frog Temple • Night of the Meteor • Years In The Future, But Not Many 

****  


  


  


Miss Jade Harley awoke in her empty laboratory with a fuzzy head, an aching back, and a mouth drier than any teetotaler township, a mouth that approached the dryness possessed by the wit of Mr David Strider: her dear friend, beloved brother, frequent collaborator, and occasional lover. Someone had draped a blanket over her sleeping form, but they had left her clothing intact, including her spectacle-goggles. Which was a good thing, for Miss Harley was nearly blind without them.

Her memories of the night before were very fuzzy, however they involved a lot of shouting and explosions, some of which in the thick Irish brogue of the local police captain. (The shouting, not the explosions.) She was quite sure, however, that the giant gaping hole in the wall hadn't been there before she had, to put it quite frankly, blacked out.

A black-haired, bespectacled, buck-toothed head thrust itself through the wall. “Oh good,” said Mr John Egbert, another brother _cum_ friend _cum_ lover―though more assistant than collaborator, lacking neither Miss Harley's nor Mr Strider's facility with clockwork automata. In fact, Mr Egbert was much better at smashing the above, as the detritus strewn across Miss Harley's laboratory floor―as well as the large sledgehammer leaning against the wall―would attest. “I was starting to worry about you.”

  


Miss Harley said nothing, just rooted around in the side pocket of her Practical Engineering Costume―really a pair of farmers' denim overalls, dyed a modish shade of green to suit her tastes―for the tiny copybook and stick of graphite that she made a point to always have on her person. Copybook and graphite secured, she quickly jotted down the numbers that she'd woken up with in the forefront of her mind and looked back up at Mr Egbert.

“I'm sorry, John,” she said. “I didn't want to lose them again.”

It was the morning of April 13th, the year of our Lord 1895. Miss Jade Harley was one-and-twenty years old.

~*~*~

It was the evening of April 13th, 1895, and the four occupants of the house had draped themselves over the various mismatched (but well-padded) sofas, ottomans, and settees that comprised Mr John Egbert's private parlor. The walls, which were stained a dark walnut, had as of recent been mostly obscured by the various broadsides for kinematic shows that Mr Egbert had rescued from their certain fate in the theatre furnace.

“That they are are latitudinal and longitudinal coordinates is fairly obvious,” Miss Rose Lalonde mused out loud, as she stared at the open copy-book in her hand. “The question, I suppose, is to what significance they possess. You will forgive me, Jade, but their morphean origin does beggar more than a few questions.”

  


Miss Harley―now clad in her usual Reformational Dress Costume of bloomers, pocketed vest, and practical shirtwaist―pursed her lips. “I _think_ ,” she said slowly. “We're supposed to go there. But I don't know why.”

“Naturally,” commented Mr Strider, looking sardonically down at her through the smoked lenses of his own spectacle-goggles. “Your sleeping self never does give us any reasons to obey its whims―only expects us to obey orders with clockwork regularity.”

“But it works out for the best!” Mr Egbert protested, leaning forward excitedly in his chair. “It lead us here to New York, where Dave used his talent with the Market to turn the modest funds given to us when we left Colonel Sassacre into a full-fledged fortune that allows Rose to exercise her literary talents and and pursue her study of alienism without needing to devote any time to household tasks―not to mention paying for all the automata servants, the private difference engine, and whatever experiments Jade and Dave have been working on.”

“Galvinism,” Mr Strider volunteered, “at least on my part. I don't think even Jade knows the unholy scientific ends which she is pursuing.”

Miss Harley made a face worthy of a schoolgirl half her age. Miss Lalonde sighed, softly, and shook her head. “Be that as it may,” she murmured, stroking the loose waves of Miss Harley's unpinned hair, “I do hope your slumbering self has some idea of how soon we need to leave for this unknown locale. David and I have affairs we may need to put in order.”

“We have to be there by the twelfth of June,” Miss Harley replied, sounding curiously short of breath. “Don't ask how I know, dear Rose. Please, don't ask.”

“Oh, Jade,” Miss Lalonde breathed, setting copy-book down on the low table as she pressed a soft kiss to the shell of Miss Harley's ear. “I wouldn't dream of it.”

~*~*~

In the year of our Lord 1874, a newspaperman named Sassacre―once a cunning colonel during the War Between The States and the commander of half-a-dozen airships―came to adopt four orphan children: two girls and two boys. He named them after fallen wartime comrades and raised them to follow in his footsteps. To the first boy, he gave his love of japery and of flying. To the second, his enjoyment of uncanny specimens pickled in formaldehyde and a fine appreciation of the majesty of a well-tuned clock. One of the girls was to follow in his literary footsteps, as well as share his deep appreciation for the hidden structures of the mind. The other girl―the one they all considered to be the youngest, though in unknown truth they had all four of them been created in one single second―ah, she was to inherit his scientific curiosity, his willingness to explore the impossible, and his undying love of adventure and the unknown.

To be fair, they all had inherited that love. They'd inherited a love of fine crafted baked goods as well―at least, apart from John Egbert, who was just strange that way.

And so the years passed and the four orphans grew, as orphan children (and indeed all children) often do. The years passed like sweetly dripping molasses as Colonel Sassacre piloted his mighty steamboat up and down the length of the Mississippi River: righting wrongs, solving mysteries, and writing it all down for half a cent per word. From time to time, he would disappear to the bowels of the _SS Betty Crocker_ in order to tinker with his half-a-dozen half-made mechanical men. Miss Harley would always be there to assist him.

Miss Harley thought she and the other three would stay with Colonel Sassacre forever. But a dream she had on her eighteenth birthday told her otherwise. She awoke one morning with three words on her lips: New York City. She knew somehow without knowing that they had to be there, all four of them, that it was there they would make a new life, until the time came to venture even further away from the only home they had ever known.

She hadn't expected Old Sassacre to understand when she told him, but the Colonel was a very deep man.

“Of course you must go!” the Colonel cried. “Land sakes almighty, do you think you were delivered to me merely to keep me company as I pilot this boat into old age? No, you must go. I only wish I could give you, your brothers, and your sister more.”

“I won't forget you!” Miss Harley promised and she knew, somehow, that she never could.

~*~*~

After the four orphans' affairs were put in order―their heavily modified brownstone sold to a fellowship of fellow eccentric scientists, various meetings with Miss Lalonde's publisher having been held and four very _special_ clocks delivered to four very rich, very bad men, who four short days later would meet their well deserved and unlamented demise―Mr Egbert, Miss Lalonde, Mr Strider, and Miss Harley left New York City by way of the transcontinental railroad which, thanks to certain recent innovations in steam engineering, allowed them to reach the city of San Francisco in approximately the same time their journey to New York City from Missouri had taken. Lodgings at a boarding house catering especially to scientists, artists, con men, and mad men were swiftly secured for the length of time it might take for them to find passage overseas.

  


They had been in San Francisco for nearly a week when Mr John Egbert arrived back at their rented suite of rooms in a flurry of excitement. “Jade! Rose! Dave! I've found her!”

Miss Lalonde raised an eyebrow. “Found who? I hadn't realized your searchings had extended from our transport to no doubt fortunate members of the fairer sex.”

Mr Egbert laughed. “Quite humorous, Rose! I haven't found any ladies, though―at least, not what you'd call human ladies. I found us an airship!”

“An airship!” Miss Harley cried, immediately enchanted, for it has always been the greatest dream of the eccentric scientist to own his (or, quite possibly in these modern times, her) personal airship.

“Yes!” Mr Egbert replied, bouncing up and down on the toes of his boots. “An airship! One big enough for the four of us, with plenty of room for our luggage, yet in need of no large crew besides myself to navigated and the rest of you to assist on occasion. She's down at the the air docks right now. I call her the _AS Bunny-In-The-Box_!”

“Bunny... in the box?” Mr Strider mouthed the words as if he wasn't quite sure he'd heard correctly.

Mr Egbert nodded. “I almost named her _Casey Girl_ ―and then I thought, perhaps, _Livonia Tyler_ ―or _Cameron Poe_ ―but then I realized that I had a better name for her than even all of those.”

“Far be it from me to quibble in the field of nomenclature,” Miss Lalonde said, archly. “But wasn't it supposed to be _Jack_ in that box?”

A shiver tore down Miss Harley's spine. She'd once heard the phrase, “as if someone had walked over my grave” but she had never truly understood its meaning until now. She looked at the white faces of her companions and knew they had experienced the exact same feeling―and had as little idea to what had caused it as she did.

“Well, _I_ like it,” said Miss Harley and that, as they say, was that.

~*~*~

They were afloat for the better part of a month. Although Mr Egbert was very enthusiastic when it came to flying their airship―and actually quite competent at it―his skills at navigation left something to be desired.

On the morning of June 11th, Miss Harley finally caught sight of the thing she hadn't known she was looking for.

“Look!” she cried, pointing at the ruined temple with the frog statue almost directly below the _Bunny-in-the-Box_. “There it is! Hellmurder Island!”

“Such a charming name you've given it,” Mr Strider muttered under his breath.

Miss Harley ignored him. “Bring her down, John!”

“Aye, aye, madame!” cried Mr Egbert. “To quote our dearest adopted father: Land sake's almighty! We are cooking with petrol now!”

~*~*~

They managed to tie the airship down to one of the stone pillars and used an inflatable boat of Miss Harley's own construction to row across the bay to the frog temple. Miss Harley had been quite adamant that they visit the temple immediately, even before building a camp and shelter on the island shore.

“Ah, look!” cried Mr Egbert, leaning so far over the side of the boat that it was a wonder he did not fall out. “Stairs!”

“Hmm,” said Mr Strider. “They look slippery and tediously steep. Do attempt to be careful, John, though I know it is entirely against your nature.”

Mr Egbert's response to that was to stand up in the inflatable boat, threatening to capsize it, and then immediately bound over the lowest step above sea level, landing squarely at the edge of it.

He wobbled once, then twice, then fell backwards into the seawater. His head soon surfaced, however, sputtering water. Mr Strider shook his head slowly, then leaned forward to brush his lips against Mr Egbert's bobbing forehead. “My dear brother,” he murmured softly. “I did warn you.”

~*~*~

“There,” said Miss Harley, once they had finally all made their way up to the temple entrance―Mr Egbert having suffered repeated slips upon on his own journey. “There they are. They're why I'm here.”

“To view an overwhelming surfeit of runes,” Miss Lalonde observed, “the subject matter which seems to be for the most part small reptiles and amphibians both.”

“No,” Miss Harley corrected her sister-friend-love. “To reconstruct a program of such complexity that the greatest difference engines currently constructed―Great Atlas, Hypatia, even Sweet Ada!―are ill-equipped to process this program. We're going to have to build one of our own, one stronger than any of those. And then...” She breathed deeply. “And then. We'll see what happens.”

Mr Egbert shivered. “How do you know these things, Jade?”

“I don't know,” she said softly. “I just do.”

~*~*~

Miss Harley wanted to sleep that night in the frog temple, but her companions dismissed the idea on the grounds that the temple inside was too cold and dank. Perhaps it was, but Miss Harley was sure that if she were to fall asleep within... well, _something_ would happen. She didn't know, of course, but then she never knew these things until it was time to know.

Perhaps that meant it wasn't quite time yet.

She dozed fitfully in her bed on the airship, half incoherent dreams of green light and grey insect people, of eldritch monsters blowing bubbles and a very, very good dog, the very best of friends.

_Halley_ , she thought, surprised. _He looks like Halley. Like Colonel Sassacre's Halley._

He licked her dreamface. _Let us win_ , she told the dog, burying her dreamhands in his white fur. _No. Not us. It won't be us, will it? Give us a world where they can win. Where we all can win. Where we can win, but not lose what made us us._

Her dreams were disturbed by fire falling from heaven.

She could see it from the window of her tiny airship cabin. The stone tower on the mainland―the one that had matched the pillar their airship was tied to―had been destroyed, with smoke rising up from the the jungle behind it.

_A meteor_ , she thought, alarmed and before she had time to think further she had already pulled on warm clothing, was sounding the alarm and readying the inflatable boat to take them to the mainland.

What happened next―the fruitless, frenzied search for the meteor―might have taken minutes or hours. None of them were in a state to judge it. It was in the twilight hour just before dawn when their search finally ended, when they found the smoking crater and four infants crawling around inside it.

“Who are they?” Mr Egbert whispered. “What are they?”

“They're ours,” said Miss Harley, and she knew inside that she was right. “They're our children.”

It was the morning of June 12th, 1895. Miss Harley took her son into her arms and turned her face to greet the rising sun.

~*~*~

It was the morning of June 11th, in the year of our Lord 1908, and Mrs Jade Harley sat with Mrs Rose Lalond on the grass around their tower home and watched the sun set into the horizon. At four-and-thirty years of age, neither Mrs Harley nor Mrs Lalonde were any more married than they had been at one-and-twenty. The titles were a polite fiction. Mrs Harley and Mrs Lalonde were used to polite fictions, even more so that Mr Egbert and Mr Strider.

The four children― _their_ children―were strong and clever and bold. Mrs Harley's son Jack quite often assisted his mother in her exploration of the frog temple and in fact had managed to explore and map the entire island on his own. Mr Strider's son Beau had ended up surpassing both father and aunt in his skill at creating clockwork automatons―though Mr Strider privately disapproved of many of the uses Beau put his creations to. Fern, Mrs Lalonde's daughter, had very little in common with her mother, however. She intended to be a scientist and inventrix like her aunt and had taken over much of the programming of their improved difference engine, which Mr Egbert had named NIC CAGE for his own inscrutable reasons. Mr Egbert's own daughter, Anne, was the sweet-tempered planet that the other three children revolved around. Though less skilled in the scientific arts than her sister and brothers, her good nature and sunny disposition helped keep things on Hellmurder Island running smoothly.

Mrs Harley loved them all more than words could describe.

Tomorrow the children would feed the four program cards into NIC CAGE and four doors in the air would open. Tomorrow, they would take their place alongside their children, to guard them and guide them until they could bring the new world to come, a world for them and all their friends, even those only known through half-remembered dreams.


End file.
